Electronic devices, including portable electronic devices, have gained widespread use and can provide a variety of functions including, for example, telephonic, electronic messaging and other personal information manager (PIM) application functions. Portable electronic devices can include several types of devices including mobile stations such as simple cellular telephones, smart telephones, wireless PDAs, and laptop computers with wireless 802.11 or Bluetooth capabilities. These devices run on a wide variety of networks from data-only networks such as Mobitex and DataTAC to complex voice and data networks such as GSM/GPRS, CDMA, EDGE, UMTS and CDMA2000 networks.
Devices such as PDAs or smart telephones are generally intended for handheld use and ease of portability. Smaller devices are generally desirable for portability and touch screen devices constructed of a display, such as a liquid crystal display, with a touch-sensitive overlay are useful on such handheld devices as such handheld devices are small and are therefore limited in space available for user input and output devices.
These devices may be used for storage of personal or confidential information and are easily lost or stolen given their portability. Therefore, it is useful to control access to such a device or to features on the device using passcode protection, for example. Passcodes set by typing alphanumeric characters, for example, are commonly long and cumbersome to enter in order to provide the desired level of security. These passcodes may be difficult to remember given their length or may be easy to guess. Other passcodes may be easy to break to gain access to the device.
Improvements in access control in electronic devices are therefore desirable.